“I believe you promised to answer some questions.”
She rolled her eyes. “Seriously? Fine. I’ll answer your stupid questions. Just take me back to my car.”
“Questions first.”
She groaned, then leaned against the door like she was trying to get as far away from him as possible.
“Where’s Elyse?” he asked.
“How the hell should I know? She was going to go visit her grandfather.”
“Where’s Elyse?”
“Seriously, dude. You really aren’t listening to me.”
“Where is Elyse?”
“Stop asking me that, God dammit!”
“I’ll stop when you give me a real answer.”
“I gave you a real answer.”
“You gave me a lie.”
“The hell I did. I have no idea where she is.”
“All right,” he said. “Then let me rephrase. What happened to her?”
“I don’t know.” Though she tried to sell it, some of the conviction had left her voice.
Around them, the traffic began to slow just a little as they neared the crest of the Sepulveda Pass.
“I think you do know, but are too scared to tell me.”
“Go to hell.”
“Why was that guy after you?”
“What guy?”
Logan looked over, his face hard. She was still sitting as far away as possible, her head against the metal frame of the cab, trying to look innocent. In quick succession, he punched the accelerator, tapped on the brakes. The result was the satisfying thunk of her head hitting the car’s frame.
“Ah! What the—”
“Why was that guy after you?” he asked again.
“You did that on purpose.”
“We can drive all night, or you can start talking now.”
She sulked in her corner.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “What I can also do is take you to the police. Tell them you’re involved in the disappearance of your roommate. That you probably also have something to do with the death of her friend Anthony.”
“What?” she said, surprised.
“Didn’t you know that?”
“I…I…”
Glancing over, he could see that, though she might not have actually known about it, she at least suspected something had happened to Anthony.
“They’re going to want to know all about you and your buddies Aaron and Ryan.”
“Hey, they’re not my friends.”
Logan shrugged. “But you were working with them.”
She said nothing, confirming he was right.
They passed the transition to the 101 and kept going north.
“What happened to Elyse?”
More silence. He was about to ask again when she finally spoke. “They took her.”
“Who took her?”
“I don’t know exactly. Aaron, I guess. A few others. I wasn’t there.”
“When did it happen?”
“Monday night. When she was with…Anthony.”
That answered that. “Where were they taking her?”
“I have no idea.”
He said nothing.
“Seriously,” she said. “I don’t know. I was just trying to make some extra money, that’s all.”
“You need to tell me what happened. Everything.”
She moaned loudly, as if it would be too painful for her to speak. But then she said, “Look, I got myself into some trouble, all right?”
“What kind of trouble?”
She paused, then said, “I took some money. A lot. Ten grand. Well, a lot to me, anyway. I didn’t think it was a lot to them. Thought I was being clever, taking a little here and there. But I needed the cash more than they did, you know?”
“More then who did?”
“The company I worked for. H. Wick Medical Supplies. I worked in accounts payable. Just a clerk, processing invoices. One day I came in and these lawyers were waiting for me in the conference room. They laid out copies of all the phony invoices I’d passed through. Said they were going to have me arrested.”
“Did they?”
She shook her head. “I was fired on the spot, and I spent the next two weeks waiting at home for the police to show up. Only instead of the police, this other guy knocks on my door. Totally professional looking, know what I mean? Expensive suit and nice shoes.”
“Was he from your former employer?”
“No.”
“The law firm?”
“He could have been, but he never said. He just gave me his name, Mr. Andrews, and that was it.”
“What did he want?”
“He told me he knew what I’d done, and said that if my old company filed charges there was no chance I would avoid going to prison for at least a couple of years. Then he told me it was possible he might be able to take care of things, if I was interested.” She paused. “I have a cousin who went to prison. He wasn’t the same when he was released. It changed him. Hollowed him out. I was scared to death that would happen to me. So, why wouldn’t I be interested?”
“And in exchange for this?”
She hesitated. “He wanted me to do something.”
“Set Elyse up.”
“No. No, not at all. I mean, I guess that’s what he really wanted, but that’s not how it was presented to me.”
Logan waited.
“Mr. Andrews said all I had to do was move in with some girls in Westchester, and keep an eye on one of them while pretending to be a student.”
“Elyse?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he tell you why he wanted you to keep an eye on her?”
“Not exactly. He just implied that she might have been involved in something she shouldn’t have been. You know, kind of like what I had been doing.”
“What did you think this ‘something’ was?”
“Honestly, I didn’t care. Mr. Andrews said he’d make sure the case against me was dropped, and told me he would even pay me a salary while I was doing the job for him. That sounded a hell of a lot better than going to jail.”
“Doesn’t sound like you think that now.”
She looked out the window and didn’t respond.
“So you’ve been watching her since January?” he asked to get her back on track.
“They…had to get one of the other girls to move out first,” she finally said. “That took a few weeks. Then they made sure I was ready, and I answered the ad for a new roommate.”
That was three months, plus the planning time before it, and more time getting Angie ready. This was no spur-of-the-moment action.
“So what did they have you do?”
“I was supposed to become friends with her, but we didn’t exactly click, so…” She shrugged. “We hung out sometimes, but not very much. I just kind of kept tabs on when she was around and who she talked to.”
“And who did you give the information to? Ryan?”
She laughed. “I didn’t even know Ryan was part of it until last week. He moved in about a month after I did, when the people next door moved out. But, apparently, Mr. Andrews didn’t think it was necessary to let me know who he was right away.”
“So you reported to Mr. Andrews directly.”
She shook her head. “No. Aaron.”
“How?”
“He’d come over every once in a while. We pretended like he was an old friend of mine.”
“And him hitting on Elyse and Joan? That was part of the plan, too?”
“I don’t know. I just went with it.”
Logan sat for a moment, shaking his head. “Once you were there, did you seriously think Elyse was involved in anything illegal? I mean, come on. You’ve got a brain, don’t you? You must have realized something weird was going on.”
“I tried not to think about it, okay?” she said, defensively. “I just did what I was told so I could get my life back.”
“At the expense of someone else’s.”
She said nothing for a moment, then, “Did they really kill Anthony?”
“Well, tell me this? Was Anthony the kind of person you’d think might take his own life?”